Hundreds crowd church to witness ‘miraculous’ icon

By Colette M. Jenkins
Beacon Journal religion writer
7/10/2011

JACKSON TWP.: Nicholas Kozak witnessed a miracle that he hopes will convince others that God is real.

“I hope the icon will be tangible evidence to anyone who is looking for faith and a real revelation of the lord,” said Kozak, 17, of Green. “How else can you explain myrrh coming from an icon, except that it is something of God?”

Kozak was among the overflow crowd of 300 people who gathered Thursday at St. George Serbian Orthodox Church, which seats about 100, for a special prayer service of thanksgiving that was sung to the Blessed Mother. She is represented in the Hawaiian Iveron Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos (the Greek name for Mary, the Mother of God).

The traveling icon, which streams a sweet-smelling, oily substance (identified as myrrh), officially was recognized in 2008 as miraculous and worthy of veneration by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.

Since then, numerous miracles — including the healing of blindness, cancer, demonic possession, paralysis, kidney disease and chronic pain — have been attributed to it.

The small icon, which is roughly 7 inches by 9 inches mounted in a one-inch wooden frame, has traveled to more than 250 Orthodox churches in North America and been venerated by about 250,000 people of various faith backgrounds since its blessing by the Russian Orthodox church.

The icon, whose permanent home is the Holy Theotokos of Iveron Russian Orthodox Church in Honolulu, is a replica of the Montreal Iveron Icon of the Mother of God, which was made in Russia. The original icon of the Iveron Mother of God is housed in the ancient Iveron Monastery on the peninsula of Mount Athos in Greece.

The local stop, which was part of an East Coast tour, was made on the fourth anniversary of the day the owner of the icon discovered the oily substance flowing from it.

During the local service, 10 Orthodox priests surrounded the icon, making the sign of the cross and offering incense and prayer. The guardian of the icon, who received it as a gift in 2007, shared the story of how he discovered myrrh was flowing from it.

Reader Nectarios said he began smelling a strong fragrance of roses coming from the area in which the icon was placed in his home. As he searched for the origin of the smell, he noticed the icon, which depicts Mary holding Jesus, was saturated with an oily substance. After Nectarios notified his parish priest, the icon was brought to the church and subsequently to the San Francisco Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

Nectarios also shared how his sister was cured of cancer and how a blind altar server regained his sight after being anointed with the myrrh during a prayer service.

“The greatest miracle is the change in a man’s heart who comes before this holy icon and wants to do better, to be better,” Nectarios told those assembled at the church. “The Mother of God is giving us something tangible here to point us to something that we can’t see. …She points us to her son. Do we ignore her?”

Michael and Joanne Zulia of Wadsworth had no intention of disregarding the power of God. The couple attended the service to give thanks for miracles that had already been performed in their lives. They also made their way to the church to ask for blessings on their three children and three grandchildren.

“Our first miracle was my recovery and healing from a tractor-trailer accident that left me with a traumatic brain injury. I was on a ventilator and they didn’t think I was going to make it,” Michael Zulia said. “That was in January 2010. Then in May 2010, my wife was in a serious accident. She was trapped in her car with gasoline spilling inside. But she survived and God healed her, too. That was our second miracle.”

Although the Zulias arrived at the church with a strong belief in God, their faith was strengthened when they smelled the fragrance of roses and saw the oily substance streaming from the icon.

Although the icon, which is a replica of a replica, was covered with glass, the oily substance was visible underneath. At the end of the service, the faithful who gathered, approached the icon at the front of the church. One by one, they venerated the icon and received anointing from the parish priest with the oily substance exuding through the glass and saturating the cotton balls that had been placed at the bottom of the case that held the icon.

“This is amazing! I could smell the roses as soon as I approached the icon,” Joanne Zulia said. “I have never experienced anything like this. I believe God is telling us he is still with us.”

Colette Jenkins can be reached at 330-996-3731 or cjenkins@thebeaconjournal.com

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